ILKLEY has been in the spotlight over the past week with a local campaign to clean up the Wharfe making national headlines.

Ilkley Clean River Group wants the River Wharfe in Ilkley to become the first river in the UK to gain designated bathing water status to ensure it is fit to paddle, play and swim in and to protect the river’s eco system.

Their work has featured in The Times, the Guardian, on Channel 4 News and World at One on Radio 4. The stories have served to highlight the public’s shock that sewage plants and combined sewage outlets are discharging raw sewage into rivers.

The Ilkley Clean River Group has highlighted new water testing results that show the pollution in the River Wharfe is not due to farms and agriculture as some had thought, but totally down to raw sewage. The latest testing results can be found on the groups website https://sites.google.com/view/cleanwharfeilkley/swimming-in-the-river?authuser=0

The group is getting to the bottom of how many raw sewage discharges are happening in Ilkley. Yorkshire Water has recently provided data showing that there were 136 ‘legal’ (in UK interpretation of the law) discharges at Ilkley over 77 days between April and December in 2019. That means one day in every 3.5 days.

Becky Malby from the ICRG said: “You wonder what we pay our bills for if more that a quarter of the time household waste is going straight from our toilets into the river. Yorkshire Water is now putting in a maintenance programme for the major problems in Ilkley - for example the manholes popping up along the river with raw sewage pouring out onto the footpaths has finally been fixed down and alarmed so that a response team can come out if it breaches. Yorkshire Water are also investigating if there is a way for clean water (rainwater) to be diverted out of the sewer system straight into the river, reducing the inflow to the sewage plant (and therefore the number of discharges). This is great progress.”

The group continues to campaign for a clean up operation at Addingham and Ilkley.

“Whilst we welcome the progress being made it’s just too slow, the Environment Agency dithers between ‘options’ for investigating and investing in the Wharfe,” added Becky. “We need the EA to step up the pace, model what this town needs and put in a plan to provide it.”

The group hopes that the application for Designated Bathing Status will pressure the Environment Agency to take speedier action. The application was sent to Defra in October and the town will get the results in May. Ilkley would be the first designated river in the UK.

“Getting Bathing Status means there would have to be a clean up of the Addingham CSO (combined sewer outlet) which is the source of the pollution at the Ilkley beach,” said Becky. “We have applied for both the beach area and for the area around Beanlands where locals dip and play. The latter would trigger a major overhaul of the Ilkley Sewage works.”

The Ilkley Clean River Group will continue to campaign for the Ilkley works to be complaint with the European legislation (which will be adopted by the UK post 31st January) discharging raw sewage only under exceptional circumstances, which in 2019 would have been twice (April and December storms) rather than 136 times.

A spokesperson for Yorkshire Water said: “We continue to have a constructive relationship with the Ilkley Clean River group and support their application to achieve bathing water designation for the River Wharfe, which would make it the first inland bathing water in the country.

“If achieved, we, like other stakeholders would need to make changes to maintain the designation. This would focus on the capacity of the combined sewer network which has been designed to deal with both foul and surface water.”

The Environment Agency said: “River pollution harms communities, landscapes and wildlife, which is why water companies have to meet tough standards set by law and the Environment Agency. If they fail to do so we take action against them, up to and including criminal prosecution.

“While water quality has improved dramatically over the last decade, we acknowledge there is much more to do. The Environment Agency has successfully secured significant new investment from the water companies to reduce pollution and protect water quality.”